


Breathe

by PurpleLex



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Accidental Pregnancy, F/M, focus is all Sylaire, slow build romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-18 00:29:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3549296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleLex/pseuds/PurpleLex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For one of the most cliche of prompts ➝ imagine your OTP having a one-night stand and becoming pregnant. </p>
<p>"Claire doesn’t mean for it to happen, but it starts like this."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> Peter/Emma and Noah/Tracy are side pairings that are only presented as part of the environment in the fic; they are not explored at all.

Claire doesn’t mean for it to happen, but it starts like this.

.

.

.

.:.

She goes to the bar in attempt #491 to drown her sorrows. She is annoyed that she has to uproot her life again sometime soon, her perfectly smooth skin becoming too suspicious after 7 years in the same place around the same people. But then _he_ shows up, sliding out of the shadows and plopping his morally-conflicted ass on the stool next to her.

“Go away.”

He ignores her. She sighs.

When the bartender makes their round around the bartop, _he_ buys her another wine glass. She counters with tequila shots. He matches hers with his own.

They do 5 rounds of 3 shots each in 20 minutes before the bartender looks at them and their apparent sobreity with a wary eye. Admitting to herself that it was a foolish bet, that they will never be able to outdrink each other and that he has effectedly killed her self-pitying mood anyway, she leaves. He follows.

They are three blocks down the street before she rounds on him, yelling in his face for him to leave her alone. A staring contest ensues.

A minute later and he leaves her, with a frown and bowed head. It confuses her. Of the many things she did expect out of him, actually listening was not one of them. It isn’t until he disappeares out of view that she runs back in his general direction. When she catches up to him, he says nothing. She expects a smirk of triumph over how pathetic she is. It isn’t even about it being him, not really, but instead the familiar presence, the being able to talk freely without self-censoring.

When the smirk doesn’t come, she decides that it is hidden in the shadows.

* * *

Somehow, they make it to his place.

She follows his lead this time, wondering where his steps are taking them, not afraid of any death or torture at his hands. He has proven that he wouldn’t be the cause of the former for her and she has no reason to suspect the latter, either.

He owns a loft in downtown Sydney. It is all sleek lines and minimalistic furnishings and he watches her from the embankment of windows as she walks around, openly eyeing his things, trying to figure him out. There is one box out of place on the desk, all polished old wood, and she looks to him in question, but he doesn’t stop her from opening it.

She almost expects him to keep it closed with his telekinesis at the last second.

Inside are tools that she doesn’t recognize, but there’s also a broken watch, and a few cloths and bottles that she assumes are related to the watch, too. A loose gear sits on the bottom. She grazes it just barely with the nail of her finger before closing the box with a frown and continuing on her meandering way.

When she is done, she goes to the bathroom, locks the door, and proceeds to stare at herself in the mirror for several moments. She asks herself why she is here, what she thinks she is doing flirting with danger this way, encouraging _him_ on with her presence.

She decides that she doesn’t know the answer to her own questions, except for the fact that there is some sort of comforting feeling that goes along with seeing a familiar face, no matter how much that face is hated. She decides that the first time he smirks in that evil and mocking way of his, she is leaving and never looking back.

He has a wine bottle out on the kitchen counter when she emerges. It isn’t Pinot. She may be slightly disappointed at that, having begrudgingly acquired a taste for it.

“You do realize we can’t get drunk, right?”

He pops the cork out. “I have never once been drunk.”

She blinks. Then she sits on the stool across from him at the countertop, expecting him to go into another tirade about things they have in common.

“I wan’t a popular person before Chandra came to me,” he shares. “I didn’t have any friends to go out with on a 21st birthday celebration.”

He seems to know when she’s about to make a face at the no-friends comment, looking up and catching her eye the split second before she does it. She cocks an eyebrow instead. He smirks. It’s different somehow. Her promise to herself leaves her feeling conflicted when she doesn’t move an inch from the stool.

A wine glass slides in front of her. He sips his, she sips hers, and they talk about everything and nothing. Mostly nothing. A few times they get serious, sharing tid-bits about their adopted personas from the past 15 years.

There is a lull in the conversation when Sylar asks, “Boyfriend?”

Her heart pings. “Girlfriend?” She counters instead.

He reaches for the near empty bottle and tops them both off. “No. You?”

She drains her glass. “Neither.” A smile plays at her lips. “Should I ask about you having a boyfriend?”

He throws away the bottle, making a comment about his interest being clear. She nods and murmurs about Elle. He has come around to where she is then, next to her side with his back against the countertop, and a frown is on his face at the mention. He sets his wine glass down.

It is then that she sees the tattoo on his arm. Later, she will wish she hadn’t looked down, had ignored what was in her periphery, had acknowledged the empty glass and slow conversation, gathered her purse and coat, and left.

But she doesn’t do those things. She looks down, sees her own face serenly etched with black ink into his forearm, and does the stupid thing of asking him if he’s using her as a therapist again. He denies it, saying it comes and goes at whim. She doubts the randomness of it, but says nothing further, reaching out with her fingertips to trace the tattoo.

Claire will wish later that she can blame that on alcohol, too. But she cannot blame the tenderness of the action on alcohol, or the way she is unperturbed when he takes hold of her wrist to still the movement, or the way she meets his gaze for only a minute before her own falls to his lips.

It isn’t a surprise to her when he takes hold of her jaw and makes their mouths meet much in the way they had before, the first time she went to college. It will surely be a surprise though for everyone else in the universe to know that she doesn’t pull away.

He gives her an out. He actually and truly gives her an out, bruising hands taken off her waist, eyes squeezed shut. She only wraps a leg around his hips in response.

* * *

The morning after is a roller-coaster.

It starts off slow. She awakens first to discover that Sylar is a spooner, his long lean body curved around hers, one arm splayed under her pillow and the other cupped around her front. She blushes at his hand on her waist and becomes keenly aware then of the ramifications of what they’ve done.

He will never leave her alone, now, and she will never be able to out-live this decision in the eyes of everyone else.

Oh, Claire has needed a one-night stand for a while now. What she needed though was one of understanding, where her partner listened to her needs and lived in the moment with her. So why did she have to pick this person, who would definitely not live up to the terms of never talking about it again?

When he wakes up, she tells him it was a mistake. His face immediately twists into confusion.

She gathers her clothes, stuffing her underwear in her pocket in a hurry, and he actually has the audacity to take her bra from her via his frustrating telekinesis. They share another glaring contest before she realizes that he isn’t keeping her in place.

She promptly flees.

“Don’t find me,” are the last words she screams his way. She hopes they come out with anger. She has a feeling they sound like a plea instead.

* * *

The problem with her ability is that her biological clock is perfectly attuned, never hiccuping, not even after lying on the side of death for a while. When she is late a day with her period, Claire tries to tell herself that she is like a normal person. That it is fluctuating. But the problem isn’t the fluctuation; it is that it is not fluctuating in the way that her clearly marked calendar tells her it is going to.

She waits a week before buying a pregnancy test.

Twenty minutes later, the bored boy behind the convenience store counter looks up startled when she bursts back into the place, pulling twelve more tests of different brands into her arms. He rings her up and hands her the receipt cautiously.

As she paces the length of her bedroom, she debates who to tell. No family would listen for long, no friends here would understand. A few minutes pass of pacing and wringing her hands before she pulls out her phone.

Tracy doesn’t believe her at first. She questions if Claire can even become pregnant. The younger blonde wants to take insult to that, except for the fact that right now she would prefer that outcome.

She sends Tracy a picture of all thirteen tests lined up on the bathroom counter. Tracy immediately books her a flight to Washington, D.C..

“What do you want to do?” The question is almost formal, reminding her of the year after her jump that Tracy had basically served as her handler.

Claire sighs similarly to the way she had in the times before. “I don’t know.”

“Then you have to come here. You can’t be alone. Or near him.”

She sighs again. “I know. I can’t let him find out.” She flops back on her bed. “But what about Dad?”

Tracy scoffs. “Your Dad is perceptive, but he doesn’t have a lie detector or super sonic hearing inside of him. He won’t know until you tell him, or start to show. I promise.”

* * *

For the first two months that she knows, Claire tells herself that she isn’t sure if she is keeping it or not. And for the time being, until she makes her formal decision, she is resolute in only referring to the baby as _‘it’_.

She hits her 14th week and the OBG/YN looks at her with a smile, saying that on her next visit she may be able to find out the sex of the baby. Claire begins to tear up like a fool, but thankfully the doctor thinks it’s purely hormones, and leaves her alone with a tissue box.

She ends up only staying in Washington, D.C. for near two months.

Being with her Dad again makes her happy, and she finds herself perfectly fine with the odd dynamic that Tracy and her Dad have. They don’t seem to mind her hanging around in their guest bedroom, either. However, the feeling of constantly lying to her Dad makes her paranoid, and the fast-moving city makes her feel suffocated, always looking over her shoulder in crowds for his face.

She gets an apartment in Costa Verde, California.

She almost asks her Mom if she can stay with her and Doug, but how would she explain to the neighbors that she is Sandra’s 34 year old daughter? Any cover stories would be too stressful for her Mom to keep up, and the last thing she wants to do is stress her Mom right now.

This is the time for her to reconnect with them. To make them happy by being there for them whenever they want to go to dinner, or do something silly, or simply talk.

This is the calm before the storm.

* * *

Lyle is so put-together that it makes her heart ache. Long gone is the brother that would be frustrated by her and the attention she received, that acted out at school and at home. Now he is a successful businessman with a nice house, sweet wife, cute kids.

Claire has to resist from putting her hand on her belly when she is around the kids too long, maternal instinct kicking in. Lyle actually asks her at one point, as they sit at one of the tables outside of an ice cream joint, if she is okay, saying that she looks stressed for a woman with immortality.

The comment startles a laugh out of her, especially when it’s coming from him. The laugh is a bit choked, though.

She keeps telling herself that she isn’t sure if she is keeping _it_. She’s glad that Sylar is not around to test her on those words.

* * *

Sylar does listen to what she said. He does stay away from her, not making any attempt at contact at all. It is all at once a surprise and yet not, leaving her feeling flustered and like a terribly naive cheerleader again.

He had asked her that night, when they were in the elevator of his apartment building, if she trusted him. She automatically responded with a ‘no’. She had not even had to think about it. Why would she trust him? He had smirked, like a wolf pleased at having a self-aware sheep to feast on.

The memory of that smirk would almost make her worried again, but the lack of it in now three months makes it just that — a memory. So, slowly but surely, Claire stops looking around like a paranoid spy. Her shoulders begin to ease with each new day.

She wanders into the baby sections whenever she goes shopping, now, at first staying on the fringe of the aisles until one day she finds herself standing in the middle, eyeing all the primary-colored toy contraptions with a curious gaze.

When the OBG/YN offers for her to know the sex of the baby, she declines, but only after biting her lip. She stands in the mirror the day after, wearing the jeans she bought that were a size up, and cautiously puts her hand on her belly. Her hips are wider and there is a slight bump there that can’t be denied if seen with lazer-focused eyes.

Her Mom hasn’t noticed yet, seeing her near every day, unable to discern a change from one day to the next. But she isn’t looking for one, either. The not looking for it is definitely a factor that Claire is taking advantage of, holding onto her Mom for as long as she can.

She doesn’t see Lyle too often for him to notice.

She texts a picture of herself to Tracy the next week, when talk of holiday arrangements starts up. Tracy calls her back instead, a glum tone in her voice. “You can’t come. He’ll see it immediately.”

She knows as much, knew long before she sought out the other woman’s advice. Still, the confirmation hurts.

She can’t keep it a secret forever. That she knows. Yet she was going to try foolishly anyway.

* * *

Claire leaves Costa Verde only a few days before the holidays.

She tells her Dad that she is going to celebrate her first holidays back in the United States with her Mom. She tells her Mom that she is going to celebrate them with Dad. Naturally, she does neither of these things.

It is the day before Christmas Eve and Clarie finds herself staying in Seattle. It is cold, damp, and gray, and it fits her mood perfectly. The city is decorated quite well, cardboard candy canes on lamp posts in select neighborhoods, tinsel across storefronts on others. It only serves to make her more depressed about this decision, but she doesn’t know what else to do.

If she owns up to this, she will have to tell her family everything. They will look at her differently, treat her differently, and the love will never be the same. She is tainted by the perceived evil.

Perceived, she thinks, because she isn’t sure anymore. She is not sure of much, lately, except that she loves this baby to death, and if she has to run from her own family in order to avoid raising the baby amongst conflict, then she will.

She will sacrifice anything for the life growing inside of her.

* * *

Two days before she leaves abruptly for Seattle, Claire has another appointment with an OBG/YN. The doctor offers to reveal the sex. Claire pauses, then nods.

It is a girl.

She will have a girl.

She wonders if it will come out as a spitting image of her, all blonde hair, green eyes, and petite form. Or will she be like him? With dark hair, brown eyes, tall frame?

Claire decides that she likes the idea of the child falling somewhere in the middle. Maybe blonde, but with brown eyes, and short. Or dark-haired, with green eyes, and a lanky form. A dash of her, a dash of him, a mix all the child’s own.

When she decides this is when she also decides that she has to leave, knows that she’s already fallen in love with this child and won’t be able to part with it. The very large, very paranoid part of her brain begins telling her that her Dad will never forgive her for accepting Sylar as the father of this child, even if she is not giving Sylar the opportunity to act as one.

* * *

Her relative peace in Seattle — if it can even be called that — lasts one day.

Her Mom and Dad must realize at the same time that she lied to them, because they both start calling and texting her without break when the morning of Christmas Eve hits. Her non-stop buzzing phone keeps a cringe permanently glued to her face and the best remedy she has to avoid it is to lay down on the hotel bed and stuff a pillow over her head.

This feeling of mixed guilt and fear is the worst she has ever experienced, and that is truly saying something when it wins pit against the entire chaotic year after she discovered her ability.

Claire is at a precipice and she knows it, hates it. Either she has to completely disconnect from her family, or she has to come clean. The bigger problem though is that she knows she can’t ever disconnect from them, knows that she loves them and needs them too much.

She is innately aware that this is one of the last chances she will have for her parents to be involved in the life of any child of hers, her Mom gray-haired and settled, and her Dad having finally and seriously retired from Company-related work a few years ago.

It would also be a lie if she said she hadn’t thought, more than once, about how nice it would be for Peter and Emma’s kids to babysit her own, for her child to have that last chance of a connection as well.

Which means that for this moment she is only a victim of her own cowardice as she stays curled on the hotel bed, doesn’t answer the phone, and hugs an arm around her portruding belly.

The baby thinks now is a great time to make its first attempt at a kick, sending a shock wave to her hand. The bittersweet miracle of it makes her want to cry.

* * *

It is the morning of Christmas Day that she walks out of the bathroom after taking an exhilarating hour-long shower, only to find Sylar leaning with his back against the door. Her first emotion is shock. Then comes the anger.

“How did you get in here?!”

His eyes rake over her form, bouncing around with a furrowed brow, searching for an answer he can’t quite grasp. The robe she has tied around her is big and fluffy, flowing on even her, and she almost thinks it hides her belly just enough before his eyes fly open wide and anger is thrown back in her own face.

If she wasn’t pregnant, she would jump out the window just to escape him.

As it is, he tells her in a clipped tone that her Dad called Peter, who contacted Molly Walker, who then warily passed on this hotel’s address to him, because someone had to come check on her and it wasn’t going to be anyone that actually had a family around them that they were obligated to entertain today.

He takes a step forward. She takes a step back.

He asks her why she didn’t tell him. She looks at him incredulously.

It is a tense moment where they share another one of their stares. Claire is almost beginning to think that it is their _‘thing_ ’. Except they don’t have a _thing,_ they only have a mistake of a night that can’t even be blamed on alcohol, and now they have a child that will result from it.

Panicked from the weight of the silence and the way his stare bores into her, she blurts out, “I don’t know if I’m keeping it.”

He blinks in a shuddering way. And then he laughs.

Sylar laughing is one of the most alarming things that she has ever seen, namely because it is something she has never expected to see at any point in her never-ending life. It’s a burst of a chuckle and it is over too soon and she wishes it continued because the next thing he does is step forward, kneel in front of her, and put his hands on her belly.

Her back is against the flower-papered wall, so she stays right where she is, rigid, as his large hands cover her belly. He leans his forehead against it. What he’s doing can almost be described as a loving gesture.

In an embarassing moment, it brings back memories of their night together, when he surprised her by being gentle instead of bruising, considerate instead of domineering, and used those hands to map out every inch of her body. She flushes. He doesn’t move. She hopes that he hasn’t picked up the ability to read minds in the interum.

* * *

When he stands up five agonizingly long minutes later, Sylar is much more composed. He looks less angry and more determined.

Her first words are, “You aren’t taking her away from me.”

She expects a confrontation. All he asks after is if the baby is truly a girl.

When she confirms it with a nod, he smiles, pleased at his accurate empathy, but the smile soon drops when he picks up on the fact that Claire is no more relaxed than she was when she opened the door and found him in her room.

They talk semantics. Or at least, they attempt to. She takes in every word of his with a suspicious ear, expecting him to come at her like the charming devil until he can make her complacent and take the baby and run. He treats her with exasperation and some anger, repeating several times that he won’t be going anywhere, or accept no role in his daughter’s life.

His firmness on the matter is a little endearing. But that impression is swiftly swept away when her paranoia rears its ugly head.

He asks her, again, if she trusts him. She promptly gives a negative reply.

Sylar cocks his head. She ignores it.

* * *

They accomplish nothing between the two of them after talking for an hour. The only thing they do eventually agree on is that she needs to return to her family and tell them about the baby.

Sylar’s face twists when she brings them up, clearly showing that he would rather face a thousand variations of torture than have to deal with her family being in the picture to hate on him every second of every day for the rest of their lives, but oddly enough it is him agreeing with her decision to cut ties that makes her cling back to them more than ever.

He rolls his eyes at her when she tells him it’s the end of the discussion. To further prove her point, she slams the bathroom door in his face.

She isn’t sure, but she thinks that he may have started smirking before she did.

That does not make any sense, though, so she ignores him, keeps an eye on the lock on the door, and changes as quickly into her clothes as she can for a short pregnant woman in a humid bathroom.

* * *

Sylar is the worst person to fly with.

It takes him forever to stop shifting around in his seat, but once he does, he becomes the obnoxious person that keeps flagging down the stewardess for peanuts and pretzels and soda and everything else under the sun. She leans her head against the window and only ocassionally sneaks her hand over to steal an M&M from his tray.

A baby cries a few rows behind them as they take off.

Their own baby starts to kick against her stomach halfway through the flight.

She looks at him sideways then, finds him with his head tipped back and eyes hooded, managing to look both bored and on high-alert at the same time. She remembers all the things he had told her before, 5 months ago, about working and living in the shadow of people, keeping crowds near but not close.

He said he hated to be alone, after what happened with Matt and being stuck in his mind. Even though she doesn’t completely believe him and Peter about what happened, afraid that once she does it will mean she is forgiving and forgetting, she does find herself contemplating how difficult it must be for him to battle that loneliness against his addiction for abilities.

Claire takes hold of his hand and places it over her belly as their baby continues to kick. She closes her eyes before he looks over, trying not to make a big deal out of it.

The hum of the plane lulls her into a doze until they land.

* * *

Tracy was right — it turns out that all she had to do was show up and her Dad would put the pieces together before she could even begin to form adequate words of explanation.

It doesn’t help that she shows up with Sylar at her side, though.

As her Dad yells more to Sylar than her, looking like the most conflicted person on the planet, hindsight tells her that if she had said she had a one-night-stand when she first came home 4 months ago, all she would have faced was a sympathetic gaze before her parents swiftly moved onto doing everything in their power to help her set up for the baby. They may have remained clueless about a certain serial killer ever fitting into the equation, or least for longer than this.

Hindsight is always a bitch like that.

Thankfully, the yelling doesn’t go on too long. If it had, Claire would be worried about Sylar losing his cool in the face of so much negativity. Him keeping his hand on her belly and on the very reminder of why he wasn’t killing the man in front of him would only last as a deterrant for so long for his reckless mind.

What quiets the place down is Tracy coming home in the nick of time and pulling Noah off to the side. Immediately after, Sylar is kicked out, Claire is given a room, and they have an awkward Christmas dinner.

“Happy Holidays,” she murmurs as she pushes the cranberry dressing around her plate, lacking any enthusiasm to go with the baby’s appetite.

Her Dad isn’t amused.

* * *

Sylar stays away for 3 days. She is grateful for it, but also finds herself a little relieved when she’s turning down the guest bed for the night and hears him opening the window, pulling himself through. She doesn’t know where these conflicted feelings keep coming from.

She decides to blame it on the baby’s influence.

He looks awkward in the room, pulling the office chair out of the corner and sitting in it, hunched over with his elbows on his knees, eyeing her in an unreadable way. She sits on the bed, having to lean back slightly from her belly, and sighs in resignation.

“Tracy helped me find another OBG/YN today.”

“You’re staying.” His tone has something in it, something she can’t identify.

She takes it as a negative and becomes frustrated. “I don’t know. You tell me where’s a better place to stay and give birth. Here with my Dad and his girlfriend, the woman who used to advise me after I made the worst decision of my life.

“Or I could go back to California with my Mom and a brother I can’t really call my brother anymore because it raises too many questions. That’d be fun.

“Or maybe I could go to New Jersey and hang around with Peter and Emma, but since I have no idea what I’m doing, me calling them every two hours to ask if it’s normal for the baby to do this or that will probably make them hate me in less than a week, and if that happens I might as well be a young-looking single mother anywhere else in the world!”

“Breathe.”

Claire draws in a deep breath in a mocking way. He frowns.

“This wasn’t a mistake,” he says, standing, and her hand finds its way to her belly again. She feels herself agreeing with him, begrudgingly, if only because of the result that spawned from it.

She feels frustrated, confused, lost, and afraid, as well as angry at herself for how much all of those other heightened emotions are holding her back from being able to make any concrete decisions. At least, as of late.

“When is your appointment?” Sylar asks.

It takes her by surprise and out of her thoughts. “…Two weeks.”

He nods. Then he goes back to the window. She doesn’t expect him to ask if he can go with her, already knowing that he will be there. She supposes they both have trust issues with each other now.

* * *

She tells her Mom about her pregnancy over the phone, leaving out the pieces regarding a certain serial killer that her Mom only remembers the existence of most of the time.

Whatever downsides she had expected to be faced with, they are absent. Her Mom is happy, ecstatic even, and it leaves Claire wishing she had told her sooner. She wishes she had told her in person.

As it is, her Mom decides then and there that she and Doug will make plans to come stay in the capital the month she is due. She makes a few jokes about being the second person to hold the baby, as well. It’s sweet and light-hearted and exactly the perspective that she has needed these past 5 months, a perspective she was too paranoid to hope to receive from even her Mom.

Claire gets teary-eyed, and they have a few minutes of relative silence on the phone together.

It manages to be almost as comforting as if they were in the same room.

* * *

A week later and she and her Dad start to look at apartments online, narrowing down the flyers of ones they intend to go check out themselves.

Tracy floats in and out of the discussion, only spending half an hour here and there when she has time while not working on an assignment of her own. That mostly leaves Claire sitting at the kitchen table with her Dad, scrolling through pictures and discussing various amenities and fixtures she would like, as well as him informing her what prices are rip-offs and which are too low to be anything but sketchy as hell.

It’s nice, almost carefree, and most of the time brings her back to the old dynamic they would have, when threats of death and the Company and the government weren’t the issue of the day. It gives her hope that her Dad will move past the paternity of the baby, hope that maybe he already has and has yet to realize it.

She doesn’t dare ask, though.

They go through a dozen listings before Claire finds a place she actually sort-of likes, only for her Dad to instantly veto it. He brings up various points about its security risks. She is annoyed to admit that he does have a point, herself managing to forget to look for that for a moment. Instead, she sighs and clicks the back button.

Somehow they pass the day by with only a few places chosen, and she is not exactly able to envision herself living with a baby in any of them.

She finds herself looking at apartments across the river, in Alexandria, Virginia, and is more pleased with the selection, finding the styles more close to what she wants. When she pulls out the laptop the next day with that city typed in, she can tell her Dad wants to fight her on it, but before he can, she points out that it’s only a short drive away.

He doesn’t sigh, but he does his whole clenched jaw routine, and it’s basically the same thing.

* * *

Her hand rests comfortably on her protruding stomach as she waits in the OBG/YN’s office.

Claire cannot say that she is exactly surprised when Sylar breezes through the door, instantly coming to sit in the chair next to her. If anything, he keeps his promises. Instead, she keeps a thoughtful eye on him and finds herself attempting to conceal a smirk at the way his tall, dark, and handsome form stretches awkwardly in the chair and commands the attention of all the other lonely mothers-to-be.

It’s the closest to uncomfortable that he has ever looked. She tries to commit this to memory.

They fumble when the doctor meets them, Sylar stepping up behind her and insisting to come along when the nurse calls her name. The doctor assumes they are married before Sylar seems at a loss of words and Claire quickly makes a joke by holding up her barren left hand. She says ‘partners’ instead, and somehow that also manages to throw Sylar off.

Logically, no other label fits them, so Sylar will just have to get used to it.

The whole appointment is made up of two parallel events — Claire conversing with the doctor, and Sylar constantly fighitng himself on both questioning everything and making sarcastic comments. Yes, the blonde sees the humor in the doctor’s innocent comments of her being ‘special’ with her perfect hormone levels and lucky ultrasound captures, but really, Sylar doesn’t need to smirk wide at all the inside jokes that must be tearing him up inside.

She smacks him on the arm the second they are out the door.

He feigns as though it hurt.

She hands him his copy of the latest ultrasound, awkwardly folds her arms, and waits for him to return her wish of farewell. He doesn’t. He seems like he does, at first, when he flags down a taxi and opens the door for her.

Claire climbs in. A moment later, so does he.

There is something incredibly unnerving about the way he steps out with her when they reach her Dad’s apartment building, the way he walks her to the lobby door and puts a hand on her belly and stares at her in the same unreadable way that, at this point, she is wary about trying to decipher. He does throw a smirk back on his face, though, when he looks back from the door of the taxi.

She lets out a deep breath. At least some things during this are not entirely unpredictable.

* * *

It’s amazing how quickly Peter can ride the emotional roller-coaster that is learning of the pregnancy.

He and Emma drive to Washington, D.C. for their son’s field trip, bringing the whole family along because they are that sort of family that tries to make the most out of little trips for all involved. Claire finds it adorable. When she meets Peter and Emma at the door for dinner, her Dad and Tracy agreeing to watch the kids for a few hours, she greets them all with the hugs and kisses of a old family friend that isn’t allowed to call themselves the illegitimate cousin.

Peter’s eyes bug out at the very obvious belly, but Emma takes it in stride with a crease in her brow that clearly says she doesn’t think she fully understands what is going on, so she’s going to be polite and sweet as heaven instead.

Claire pulls her coat on with a quick, “I’m going to need more bread in me before you get the paternity story, so let’s go.”

Peter goes through all the emotions during the course of their dinner, and Claire finds herself mouthing an apology to Emma at a few different intervals. This was why she asked for a corner booth when they first arrived.

While Peter is going through his denial stage, the blondes strike up a long conversation about the new additions to the hospital that both husband and wife work at. Emma tells her about the new wing that is being added, and how she will soon be transferred to pediatrics full-time. She seems content with it, so Claire offers her congratulations, and she can’t even fully take a sip of her water afterwards before Peter is putting hand on her shoulder and telling her that he supports her.

She assumes that that means he is in the acceptance phase now. She nods and thanks him, for lack of a better reply. His support means a lot to her, but considering she had almost resigned herself several months ago to never receiving it, all she feels now is relief.

He makes a comment, later, about realizing now why Sylar was so odd on the phone a couple of months ago. Claire pretends to cough before he finishes the comment.

Imagining Sylar in any remotely betrayed sort of state after she ran out on him is only something that leaves her with frustrated tears and a craving for orange juice, thanks to her hormones. So, she does the next best thing, and blocks it out of her head.

* * *

Ignoring it would be easier if the man in question wasn’t constantly climbing through her window when she gets ready for bed.

At first, he comes to talk about the baby, to talk about her living situation, to talk about everything in a logical manner with a clear voice and dark eyes.

The fourth time he comes is when she is towel drying her hair after a late shower. She is barely listening to him, scrubbing at her scalp viciously, and it isn’t long until she’s leaned against the doorjam of the bathroom, holding the towel over her face and crying. It vaguely has something to do with her hair not drying fast enough to keep her from staining the pillows when she goes to bed in a minute, and much more broadly to do with her stretched skin and raging hormones.

The swift turn of events startles Sylar and she stands there for near ten minutes before she can get a hold of herself. The room is so still that she assumes he has left, except that when she pulls down the towel, he’s still sitting in the desk chair, blinking away a bewildered stare.

“…Do you—“

“No,” she cuts him off. Whatever was coming next in that sentence — wanting to talk about it, wanting a hug, anythign else of the sort — she does not want to hear it.

Claire remembers what he was talking about, remembers that he was talking about things the baby would need. She goes to the vanity sink, ties her hair up in a ponytail, and tells him that she’s looking at apartments and that the baby will live full-time with her, no negotiating possible.

He doesn’t fight that, thankfully, but he also leaves soon after, and she wonders which action was influenced by what she said and which was influenced by her rendition of an emotional SpongeBob.

* * *

“….and here’s the laundry closet. The washer and dryer are included as part of the pre-furnishings, along with the kitchen appliances….”

Claire follows the building’s manager through the 800 square feet layout and quickly finds herself falling in love. She asks if she can walk around herself, for a few minutes, and the manager leaves her with the unlocked apartment and a reminder to meet them back at the front desk to talk figures.

They think they already have her sold. They are right.

She stands in the middle of the main room and has a flash of how it will be decorated.

She knows that the sofa will go here, and the television there. She will push the dining table against the other side, a desk along the angled wall, and the bathrooms’ black and white themes will be kept the same, save for only varying splashes of color. Her bedroom can be a work in progress forever for all she cares, as she stands in the doorway of the second room and envisions the nursery.

The crib will go along the wall closest to the door with the dresser under the window. Perhaps she will hang curtains matching the walls, softening the appearance of the blinds. She can find the animal stickers that used to be popular, and put them on the wall. A simple, cute theme. Claire remembers when she was a little girl, her room decorated with bears and princess touches.

She wishes that her Mom were here to help.

* * *

The monthly rent is a thousand more than she can afford off her savings, if she plans to live there without working for more than half a year. She doesn’t tell her Dad that, though, when she shows him the place. She’ll figure that part out on her own.

He tries incredibly hard to nitpick at it, but aside from the balcony access, he can’t find flaws. She talks him away from that by promising to keep the double lock latched.

Claire grins, pulling a smile out of him. Tracy turns around from the kitchen, immediately talking paperwork and furniture.

* * *

Two weeks later, it is Tracy that goes with her to the nearest home improvement store, and helps her pick out paint chips.

She settles on a pale yellow for the nursery and decides to get the several gallons needed that day, because she cannot think of reasons to postpone. Tracy shrugs and proceeds to fetch a cart while Claire waits for the paint to be mixed.

“You can’t paint the room,” are the words she is greeted with as soon as she and Tracy set the cans down in her Dad’s living room. The words are from the man of the house himself.

Claire puts her hands on her hips. “Why not?”

“The fumes.”

“I’ll open the window!”

He does his clenched jaw routine again.

“I’ll paint it in shifts! I’m not going to sit around while other people paint my baby’s room,” she insists. Tracy wisely ignores that this semi-argument is even happening, walking away to the kitchen.

* * *

Claire does, actually — that is, she ends up mostly sitting.

Upon further inspection, the paint is certified something relating to not being dangerous to inhale. She gives her Dad a triumphant smile and, the next day, go to paint.

She dumps out the yellow in a metal bin, grabs a roller, and promptly finds herself dealing with pregnancy feet. The lack of pain sensors takes her straight from swelled feet to feet without feeling at all, bypassing the aching detour that she’s read about roughly half a dozen times in the stack of pregnancy books by her bed.

Her Dad helps her, the first two hours, until he gets a call from someone he used to help during his later reformed years of working and he promptly leaves her with an apology and a kiss on the cheek. Sitting by one of the room’s corners, painting all of the white patches within reach, she supposes it could be worse. Her Dad could still be working with the Company, running off to answer mysterious calls from the bad people.

Claire goes another half hour before her endless pit of a stomach starts to growl.

She thinks through who she can call. The list is embarassingly short. She slides out of the chair and slowly lays down on the carpet, stretching out her back. A sigh escapes her. She scrolls through her contacts with a quick swipe of a thumb.

He knocks on the door not long after, leading her to assume that he used either a flying or speeding ability. He makes his way into the apartment before she can make any progress on properly sitting up again. If he had taken longer, she may have started to take a nap before her stomach became more persistent.

Sylar drops the bag of hamburgers and fries next to her before grabbing hold of her hands and pulling her up. With the flick of a wrist, he moves the chair behind her, for support.

“I can sit up on my own,” she protests.

He stretches out his legs next to her, glancing around the empty room. “Yellow?”

“Have something to say about the choice?” She tries to challenge with the words. But, considering she is eating the large order of french fries that he brought her in order to feed the baby inside of her that is half his, it doesn’t come across near as harsh as it would have a year ago.

“It’s positive.” He stands, picking up the roller she abandoned a while ago.

Claire’s brow furrows and she wants to ask if that’s a compliment or simply a statement, wants to ask why he is such a confusing person. But then he starts painting and asking her about her plans for the nursery. She shares them all without preamble.

By the end of the day, he manages to convince her to add a chair to the unclaimed corner and she manages to convince him to set up the new furniture for her.

* * *

She’s in her 7th month, feeling constantly bloated, and she thinks that she negotiated the better end of the deal when the were painting, until Sylar shows up at the door of her Dad’s apartment, all smirks and somehow genuine cheer, ready to stare at furniture manuals for the next eight hours with her right by his side.

Then she knows that he most definitely is not going to suffer from this arrangement.

The eight hours of her supervising him and telling him where to move the furniture turns out to be eight hours of him being the most talkative, prying, and philosophical that she has ever known him to be. They’re finishing putting the crib together, her sitting down to help for lack of anything else to do after all this time, when he brings up the question _‘how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?’_ again. She wants to scream.

Instead, she lets out a frustrated huff, and flings the wrench at him.

It blooms a flush on his chest. “Violence is not the answer, Claire.”

“Stop mocking, and asking stupid questions with no answers, and just— stop talking!”

He tilts his head with pursed lips and narrowed eyes. “Hm. No.”

“Asshole.”

He grins.

* * *

Moving out of her Dad’s and into the new apartment is not much of an event.

In fact, it only consists of her putting her clothes in a few boxes and having her Dad lug them from point A to point B. From there, the two of them order takeout, and they share lunch before he hugs her and leaves with a promise to meet up later in the week.

Once he is well and truly gone and she is well and truly in her new home, Claire feels its oppressing stillness start to surround her. When she was alone before, she wallowed in it, but it was different somehow. She went through her self-pitying shtick and told herself that it was the start of the rest of her life, that she had to get used to it because there wasn’t much else.

Yet here she was, baby kicking in her stomach, family a short drive away, and the serial killer she calls her baby daddy always floating around nearby somewhere.

She props herself up in front of the television and thinks that it might be a miracle if this baby reaches childhood maintaining any belief of having a normal life.

* * *

Sylar doesn’t climb through the window of her new apartment. This time, he uses the door.

She wakes up out of a vivid dream to the noise of her apartment door unlocking and for a minute, her heart is stricken with panic. She has the revolver her Dad gave her ages ago in her hands, cocked and loaded, by the time Sylar creeps into the doorway. She manages to recognize his silhouette, an accomplishment she’s not sure she ever wanted to have on her record.

“What the hell are you doing here?!”

“…Do you have a gun?”

“You didn’t answer my question,” she hisses.

“Put the gun away, Claire.” He sounds amused. “I let myself in.” He strips off his jacket, toeing off his shoes, and it only takes her until then to put together what he’s doing.

“How did you get a key?”

Those clink on the top of the dresser. “I copied yours.”

There’s the trust issue again. She huffs. “You are not staying here.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not your place! It’s mine. I will shoot you if you don’t leave.”

Nevermind that she already put the gun back on the nightstand and that she huffs out the threat. If the light was on, she’s sure she would see him doing the shiver motion that comes from his lie detection ability.

“What are you afraid of?” He asks as he pulls back the covers.

She lays back down, blinking at the ceiling with annoyance. “That you’re going to start using my apartment like a homeless shelter.”

That garners a laugh out of him.

They lay there, companionably blinking in the dark, and she wants to damn him for sliding into her bed so easily. The thought applies to a certain night 7 months ago, except that it was her sliding into his bed that time, and no, those are the last thoughts Claire should be having right now with him right beside her.

She turns to face the window and away from him.

* * *

She doesn’t know how, or who initiated it, but when morning light breaks through the blinds, she finds herself with her head nestled into Sylar’s arm, his form curled around hers. It’s almost exactly as it was before.

Frustration flows over her again and she resists the urge to punch him. Instead, Claire pinches him, and enjoys the awakening yelp that jolts from his lips after. She sits up and makes her way to the shower.

She shuts the door with a triumphant smirk of her own.

* * *

They settle into a routine, which manages to be almost as alarming as the positive pregnancy tests had been.

The weeks pass and he progressively sleeps in her apartment more days of the week than not. Sylar being there most of the time provides her with a permanent support system each time she has a hormonal outburst or odd craving that requires a trip to the store. Claire had been ignoring many of the cravings, before, but with him here now, she starts to use him like a butler.

She reasons that it’s perfectly right to do so, since the most he does is roll his eyes as he grabs his keys.

As she approaches her 8th month of pregnancy, she asks him where he goes when he’s not incessantly hovering around her. He answers vaguely, saying that he goes to be alone. Sometimes a park, sometimes a walk on the street, sometimes elsewhere.

She should pester him more. She doesn’t.

* * *

It doesn’t take long for Sylar to start poking through her stack of pregnancy books.

Claire thought he might try to hide it, but he doesn’t, openly reading a few with intense focus. He stays away from the ones directed purely to the mothers-to-be, the ones about weight gain and stretch marks and all the side effects that are only affecting her at the minimum that she guesses they have to.

She is sat one evening, watching another generic serial show about detectives and medical examiners, when Sylar sets down one of the books and pulls her feet into his lap. She opens her mouth to ask him what he’s doing, but she doesn’t have to, because almost immediately his gentle hands are massaging her feet.

The lack of pain receptors helps immensely with her commonly swelled feet, but that doesn’t stop them from inflaming much of the time. She doesn’t expect what Sylar’s doing to work very well, but who is she to turn down a foot massage? Claire turns her head back to the television show.

A few minutes pass before she feels herself growing warm, a certain hormone alighting low by her hips.

She glances at him, finds him staring at her, his ministrations not faltering. “What are you doing?” She asks, and if it comes out the tiniest bit breathless, she’s blaming her uncontrollable hormones.

Sylar raises an eyebrow. “The book said massaging the feet helps. Is it working?”

She feels a familiar aching start up, and wishes she were bold enough to ask him if this is what he’s trying to do. But as it is, she’s 8 months pregnant and constantly conflicted on how she feels about the man on the other end of the couch, so she decides she isn’t that bold right now.

“Stop,” is all she says as she pulls away her feet.

She goes to bed early, closing the door, and he takes the hint without protest.

* * *

He’s on the couch the next morning when she walks out.

Claire sighs, turns away, and busies herself with breakfast.

* * *

They don’t talk about baby names until her next doctor appointment, when the OBG/YN leaves her with a lighthearted tease about seeing her next week _‘unless the baby comes in the meantime’_.

She was always putting it off, always assuming that there would be some obviously fantastic time to bring up the subject with Sylar. He had to have a say in it, she begrudgingly admitted. However, considering his constant and varying modes of anxiety with her family, as well as his lack of talking about any of his own, the perfect timing for such a discussion never came to pass.

Until now.

Claire almost brings it up in the taxi, before thinking better of it with the stranger in the car, but as soon as they’re in the elevator alone, she blurts it out.

He actually speedwalks to the apartment door when the elevator opens, and if that’s not concerning when coming from the likes of him, she doesn’t know what is. She does her best to catch up to him in her petite and balloon-like state.

She closes the apartment door behind him and he’s shoved his hands in his pockets. “Pick whatever you want,” he says. It only draws a suspicious gaze from her in response.

That’s too easy. Sylar has an opinion about everything, and when he doesn’t then that is usually when he has an ulterior motive. Most of the time, she’s figured out that his ulterior motive is when he is agreeing with her and wants her to make it seem as though it is only her idea, but this is different. This has him running a hand through his too-long hair and standing as tense as a coil.

“Don’t you have any ideas?” She asks slowly.

He gives her a curt ‘ _no_ ’ and then proceeds to go stand on the balcony, leaning against the railing.

Claire almost goes to try to keep talking, but one look at his tense form, and she decides not to. It isn’t too long after that he’s disappeared for the day.

* * *

She invites her parents, Tracy, and Doug to lunch a couple days later, when her Mom and Doug arrive in town. Her Dad and Tracy pick her up at the apartment, wanting to look at it properly. Her Dad looks ready to kill when he sees the couch with a sheet stuck into the sides and a pillow propped at the end, Sylar’s new bed after she more or less kicked him out of hers.

Claire doesn’t bother trying to make a reasonable explanation and instead grabs her purse and coat. They almost make it out the door before Sylar emerges from the bathroom and invites himself along.

Tracy shoots Claire a stare full of questions. The younger blonde only shrugs.

She’s too tired for this battle.

* * *

It is most definitely a battle, for Sylar only keeps quiet until they order drinks. After that, he manages to insert a mock or sarcastic comment into every discussion without pause. He even smirks, looking proud of himself for being quick on the quips. Doug looks perpetually confused at the spectacle.

Claire wishes she was still able to wear heels comfortably so that she could stab his foot with one. When Doug goes to find the bathroom, she pulls her Dad’s steak knife under the table, instead, and aims it somewhere in the vicinity of Sylar’s crotch and thigh.

They stare at eachother for a bit longer than should be necessary with such a threat looming over him. It may be because he thinks she’s bluffing, but she holds the stare without pause, pressing the tip of the blade against his jeans, and it’s only then that he must realize that she’s in a non-tolerating mood, because he leans back and stares out the window with a scowl.

She puts the knife back on the table. Her parents look crossed between proud and terrified, her Dad schooling his features when the waitress passes by the table again and he has to feign an excuse to ask for a new knife.

Tracy smirks in amusement, sipping her Cosmo when Doug comes back to the table none the wiser.

* * *

Sylar refrains from going all-in on the eyerolls until they’re back at the apartment.

Her Mom pulls her aside, when they drop her off back home, and asks her if Sylar is living with her. Claire doesn’t know for certain, and tells her Mom just that. Her Mom tells her to be careful, like she always is, and Claire only nods.

Once they open the door, Sylar gets in one snide comment about her Dad before she starts to yell at him for being so selfish and volatile. He almost looks insulted from her words, except that even he knows a part of them are right.

She isn’t feeling very forgiving right now, so she keeps flinging out curses at him as she toes off her flats, hangs up her purse, and gets a glass of water. She pauses to take her prenatal vitamin and her words after are considerably more calm. She asks why he is bothering to hang around, what he wants with her and the baby, what he’s trying to accomplish by masquerading as a great guy one day and acting the role of douchebag the next.

He gets tense again before bursting out that he doesn’t know.

Claire sighs.

He looks at her again, repeats the words.

She leans against the counter, rubs a hand along her neck, and then starts to laugh. “We’re the last two people that should be having a kid,” she says.

“Maybe,” he replies after a moment, with that emotional look that isn’t quite so unreadable anymore.

He walks over to lean against the counters opposite her, folding his arms. The minutes stretch. “Sarah,” he shares, wisp of a fond smile coming to his lips. He gestures to her belly. “Sarah, for our baby. It… I think it was my mother’s name. My real mother.”

She nods at the revelation, letting it settle between them without further comment. She knows enough of his history from finding and reading his Company file to know what he means by those words. And she knows enough about him, now, to know that trying to pry further will only make him retreat. She finds herself not wanting that outcome.

Silent, she rolls the name through her head for a few moments. Claire smiles, puts a hand on her stomach. “I like that.”

* * *

She leaves the bedroom door open that night. Claire slides under the cold sheets of the empty bed and waits.

She awakens from a dreamless sleep in the early hours of the night when Sylar lays down beside her. With hooded eyes and half-consciousness, she wonders if he was debating the action for the past five hours or if she scared him that much with the knife act.

It doesn’t matter. He slides an arm around her, buries his nose against her neck, and she gets the answer she always wanted regarding how they always end up this way come morning.

* * *

She’s 9 months along, looks like a bloated beach whale, and feels uncomfortable more hours of the day than not.

Claire lets him do the foot massages again, and tells her own body to stop wanting to get laid because it most definitely is not happening. Her hormones don’t exactly listen to her, but she can’t really expect them to.

He brings up the apartment rent one day, saying that he pre-paid a few months’ payments with the manager. She wants to be upset. She starts to, until Sylar shows off his Chrysopoeia by turning one of her decorative silk flowers into gold, so she reasons that since he can make money out of thin air, she isn’t really cutting into his life savings this way, like she would be with her parents.

She realizes then how many of his clothes and knick-knacks, including that one wooden box with the watches, have come to reside in various places around her apartment. She doesn’t say anything, because instead of finding it annoying, she finds it oddly reassuring.

Claire hasn’t worried in months about the potential of him taking the baby after she’s born. Hopefully, she is right in trusting him.

* * *

She doesn’t understand what’s happening, at first, when she goes into labor.

It starts with her feeling uncomfortable on the couch. She shifts and shifts, but no position is very relieving. Claire goes to take a shower, afterwards, and stands under the blissfully hot spray long enough for Sylar to knock on the door and ask if she’s fallen. She tells him to go away, but by now the words are lacking serious bite to them.

She’s in her robe by the dresser, towel drying her hair, when Sylar wraps his arms around her from behind. “Where are your feet?” He asks as he looks down over her shoulder, teasing, and she swats at him with a smile of her own.

He’s taking a step away when her first strong contraction hits. She grabs at the dresser, takes a deep breath at the force of it, and looks over to find Sylar already grabbing for his phone and keys.

* * *

Claire only lets her Mom in the room, at first. There are the doctors and nurses, of course, but she says she only wants her Mom with her, so her Mom is the only one that holds her hands for the first several hours. She tells Claire about her own experience birthing Lyle, makes jokes and encouraging comments as she wipes her sweaty hair away from her face.

Her Mom is the perfect person to help her through this new and terrifying experience.

Eventually, with a final push, she hears a screaming cry that tells her that her daughter is born. Tears roll down Claire’s cheeks in relief.

She holds her daughter for a few mintues before passing her to her Mom, exhausted, and it isn’t long after before the nurse have to take her to look her over more fully. Claire would like to protest that, but she’s already exhausted. Her Mom assures her that she’ll walk down with them, to keep an eye on the baby.

Claire could never be more grateful than in that moment.

Sometime later, before she passes out, someone asks her for the baby’s name. She fills out _'Sarah Meredith Bennet'_ on the form.

* * *

When she wakes up, Sylar is sitting next to the bed, hands holding hers. She blinks awake, slowly, and he doesn’t notice at first, staring at her hand and lost in his thoughts. She looks him over, and the more she stares, the more she feels as though she has to admit that her feelings for him are starting to become less complicated, starting to hold a name that’s easier to say.

She looks to where he’s holding her hand and notices something else. Claire sits up slightly against the pillows, startles him into noticing she’s awake. His lips crook in a smile.

“Your tattoo is gone,” she says.

Sylar looks down, rubs the area of skin where it used to be. “I don’t know when it disappeared,” he says, before looking back to her.

She believes him.

She laces her fingers with his and, after a moment, he kisses her fingers. Claire tells him she hates him. Her tone is soft, gentle, and she isn’t afraid when she sees him blink from the lie. He doesn’t say either the lie or the truth back, but she doesn’t expect him to.

He smiles and holds her hand between his as though she’s the only lifeboat in the middle of the ocean, and she _knows._

.:.

.

.

.

Sylar stays exactly where Claire wants him to, by her side with their daughter, and it ends exactly as she means for it to.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you liked it, please leave kudos? It means a lot!
> 
> The wonderful Nat made a playlist for this fic, which can be found here (http://8tracks.com/intuitivebitch/o-j-rea-e). I love it!! And encourage you to take a listen if you liked the fic!


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